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Free yourself from pleasure and pain, for in craving pleasure or in nursing pain there is only sorrow. ~ The Buddha

PIMC 2018 Mens' Workshop

Submitted by admin on Wed, 12/27/2017 - 09:08

Saturday January 13, 2018 9:00am to 5:00pm. Join us for a day of exploration, contemplation and discussion on how we have been formed and informed about male identity by cultural conditioning and how the Dharma aids us in becoming free, mindful human beings.

What?

This day-long workshop will be a personal and collective exploration of what it means to live as a male in today's contemporary culture - with its promises and the perils unique to our times. Together we will explore Buddhist Mindfulness and contemplative practices as a path to understand male identity and the capacity for upright and skillful living in the world. This is not a gender studies workshop, but a Dharma-centered workshop designed to explore and guide one's experience of male spiritual formation within the world.

Also, please note that this is not a meditation retreat as such. Some meditation will be included but, the focus will be on content presented by the leaders, experiential exercises and discussion of the issues included in the material.

Dharma teachers Doyle Banks, Gregory Maloof and Matthew McTigue will lead the workshop.

Please plan to bring a "brown-bag" lunch for yourself and (optional) a snack to share. We will have a 30-minute lunch break as well as other breaks throughout the day.

Background

For context, we conceived this idea three years ago. It arose out of our collective sense that “manhood” or “male identity” had been hijacked yet again by our modern western culture and driven even further into its shadow side. We also recognized that little or nothing was being offered in its place that would or could bring healing to the many and deepening rifts in our society that have been caused by the mostly-male abuses of power and privilege. Especially, we were not seeing or hearing of any Dharma-based approaches being put out into the world.

And so, after much work, we felt we were ready to bring this workshop to the community. It just so happened that it parallels the rise of the courageous #MeToo movement. It is not a response to it. Rather, it was simply the way our work was able to unfold in the time it took us to create it.

The shadow side of male power/dominance has now been exposed culturally and so this is an opportunity for men to reflect upon their complicity and to discover a new paradigm of mindful being.

In their bones, men really know there is a more compassionate masculinity that, if developed, can change power structures. This is an opportunity to actively raise the consciousness of men around power, privilege and the abuses of those toward women.

Buddhists are often criticized for lack of social action. This is one way we are offering to educate and activate a deeper consciousness among the men of PIMC and hopefully, to extend that awareness out into our greater community.